New Pokemon Sun and Moon Screenshots Show Off Battles, Poke Riding

Pokemon Sun and Moon is now just a little over a week and a half away from release, and Nintendo has now shown off a number of new Pokemon Sun and Moon screenshots that show off players in the middle of battles and Pokemon riding, the new alternative to moves like Fly, Teleport, and Cut.

With the Poke Riding system in the game, players will be able to make use of various Pokemon like Mudsdale, Charizard, Stoutland, Gogoat, and more to cross hostile terrain in the Alola Region, taking away the HMs that have been a part of Pokemon from its inception and freeing up room for moves that players will actually want instead of ones that would be forced onto their Pokemon.

This will save players from having to make HM slaves (Pokemon who no longer can learn any new moves as HM moves could not be forgotten, so they were mainly a Pokemon that served the same role as a pocket knife).

The new Pokemon Sun and Moon screenshots also show off some more footage of battles from Sun and Moon, though there isn’t much of it, mainly just Rowlet and Popplio battling one another, commanded by the Sun and Moon player characters battling Hau, the game’s main rival.

We don’t see any other moves being used in the screenshots either, but at least we get to see more of the trainer models in the game finally being visible in-game.

Players have gotten a bit of the Pokemon Riding mechanic shown off in the new Pokemon Sun and Moon screenshots in the game’s demo, where players could ride a Tauros in order to clear out a rocky path that would normally require players to use Rock Smash or something of the like to get past them.

Pokemon Sun and Moon comes out on November 18 in America and November 23 in Europe on the Nintendo 3DS.